Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Operation Pillar of Defence

I was discussing Hamas with some representatives of the
Socialist Workers Party. The debate was going no-where so I stated that I was
surprised people like them-selves embraced Hamas who as they will recognise,
hold Nazis beliefs. They were deeply
offended by this. They said I must not use the word ‘Nazi.’ Hamas, they continued, are
fascists – as if that excused their behaviour?
I responded that I have read both their
literature and that of Hamas, which is why I called Hamas Nazis and them fascists. It may be reductive to make the assumption
but a supporter of fascism is usually a fascist. The ladies stormed off.

My clarity received some interesting feedback. It is not the truth that is at issue but how
we present it. So when I call HAMAS
‘Nazis’ for most Israelis these are words that have emotive intent that
preclude discussion because the reaction is bound to be visceral.

What is important
is to convey what HAMAS represents. If we want to educate then we have to examine
HAMAS from reason and not from our gut.

Hamas are Gaza’s
government. But what is the purpose of Government? A simple answer is that
governments preside over the day to day operations of state. Government sets priorities and defines direction to which it allocates resources
in the pursuance of its goals.

And here is the issue.
Hamas has a simple world view. Once a country has been conquered
by Muslims (as Israel
was) that country must never be returned to non-Muslim (infidel) control.
An infidel (dhimmi) may only live under protected, separate but inferior status
if they agree to a Muslim contract that legalises discrimination against them.
If that religious contract is violated the penalty is death. It explains why a Jewish
baby like the 3 month old Fogel baby, was decapitated by a proud Muslim fighter
without the murderer displaying a moment of guilt either at the time or since his
conviction. Allah, the God of Hamas and Muhammad, the prophet of that
same Muslim god, permit genocide in the pursuit of theologically based conquest.
It explains why Hamas rejects any permanent peaceful settlement of the conflict
and it explains the glorification of the most evil of murderers. It
explains this in the simplest way possible.

Hamas has welfare programs but these are primarily to
attract foot soldiers to the cause and by reaching a critical mass of
supporters, to take control of the state by which it then dominates every
aspect of its people’s lives. People,
are incidental to the cause. Their
welfare is secondary if in fact it is anything other than tangential; a means
to an end.

Hamas in Gaza
has received billions of pounds (more in dollars) in foreign aid. The Gazan
state has received more aid per person than any other special interest group in
history. Money is available, as is material for construction and development. Similarly
resources are available for feeding the population, educating the masses, for
welfare and for health. So where is it all going wrong?

There is lots of evidence of great wealth in Gaza and not just in the
housing and other construction projects completed.

At issue is where all the money is spent. A military infrastructure is extraneous to
the building and maintenance of statehood in the modern era. A police force undertakes
to protect its people. The military
hardware that Hamas possesses is enormously expensive and intended solely as a provocation
to destabilise the region. Most of the
aid that Hamas receives is now sent directly to NGO’s, bypassing the Government
of Gaza because the international community has no faith in Hamas not to
redirect funds and material to its favoured recipients and towards acts of
terror and away from its intended projects.
This strategy fails however because Hamas controls the employment of UN
and NGO staff. Perhaps the most famous example was the catastrophic accident
that quickly disappeared from Western reporting once it was understood that
Hamas was responsible for it.

The “walls of a cesspool in a northern Gaza village collapsed, flooding the village
with sewage and killing 5 persons. The angry residents chased away the
Palestinian Minister of Interior, and Israel
has since sent Hamas in Gaza
2 pumps to pump out the remaining sewage”. (Jan 1, 2010)

The funds had been embezzled by the major Gazan contractor.

Hamas carried out numerous ‘suicide’ bombings in order to
derail the Oslo
accords. It does not want Peace with its neighbour, Israel. In fact Yunis al Astal, a member of the
Palestinian Authority parliament, spelled out his organization's vision for the
genocidal annihilation of the Jewish people. The interview was broadcast on
Hamas Al Aqsa TV and monitored by incitement watchdog group MEMRI.

Al Astal described the ingathering of the Jewish people in
the Land of Israel in terms of a divine plan that
would give the Arabs "the honor" of annihilating them. In a few years' time, he predicted, the
Zionists will understand that they were brought here for the purpose of being
slaughtered in "a great massacre." (Arutz7, May 2011).

If we understand Hamas then we will appreciate that Palestine and Palestinian
Arabs are a means to an end. They do not see them as anything but geopolitical
pawns that must not be imbued with a vision for neighbourly peaceful
co-existence. They are a tool for
manipulation and where required, death.

To quote Hamas in
their charter:

“Israel will exist
and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it
obliterated others before it” (Hassan al-Banna, creator of the Muslim
Brotherhood)

Article Two: The
Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood
in Palestine.....”

Article Seven: “As
a result of the fact that those Muslims who adhere to the ways of the Islamic
Resistance Movement spread all over the world, rally support for it and its
stands, strive towards enhancing its struggle, the Movement is a universal one.”

The Prophet
said: "The Day of Judgement will
not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew
will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O
Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

With the greatest of disrespect I know of no god and no just
cause that actively advocates for genocide in the modern age except for the
Muslim god and its prophet. They are the
exception to the rule and their peace is no more than a cover for conquest.

A patronising New York Times editorial published at the
start of the latest war in Gaza stated: “No
country should have to endure the rocket attacks that Israel has endured from militants in Gaza, most recently over
the past four days. The question is how to stop them permanently”. From that
promising start the editorial quickly deteriorates into a formulaic Western interpretation
of the conflict that is both simplistic and naïve. It is predicated on Israel making
‘peace’ with the Palestinian Authority while missiles continue to fall on its
civilian population centres. And on the
19th of November it was reported that Islamic Jihad promised a
‘truce’ if, amongst other conditions Israel “eased the passage between
the Jewish state and the Strip.”

Simply stated this meant that Israel
should open its borders to the Gazan population without Gaza renouncing terror, cancelling its odious
Charter or ceasing its education of the local population towards religiously
sanctified genocide.

There has never been a single poll taken in Gaza that accepted Jewish
equality or long term peace with ‘the Jews’ so education towards co-existence
is not even considered relevant. With
every cease-fire Hamas has used the relative peace to bring in large quantities
of increasingly advanced weaponry.

Gaza’s citizens voted into power a corrupt and racist party
whose central plank is religious domination and mass murder. Hamas has no interest in Peace, nor does it have
any desire for co-existence.